VOA慢速英语--麻省理工学院开发AI工具,通过听咳嗽来检测COVID-19

AI Aims to Identify COVID-19 by Sounds of a Cough

Researchers are working on machine learning systems to identify COVID-19 cases by the sounds of a person's cough.

One system has demonstrated a high success rate in detecting COVID-19 in people with no physical signs of the disease. Such a tool could be important in the fight against COVID-19, which can be spread by people who do not even know they are infected.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT, recently published a paper reporting results of the system.

The team created an artificial intelligence (AI) model to examine the sounds of people who produced a forced cough. The sounds were collected from people who recorded them on computers or mobile devices. The individuals were also asked to provide information about any symptoms they were experiencing, as well as whether they had been officially tested for COVID-19.

People then sent the recordings¹ and data to researchers through the internet or their devices. Researchers reported they had received more than 70,000 recordings, amounting to about 200,000 individual cough examples. The team then trained the model on the cough sounds, as well as spoken words.

When the new cough recordings were fed into the system, it correctly identified 98.5 percent of coughs from people confirmed to have COVID-19, the researchers reported. The model also detected 100 percent of coughs in people who reported they had tested positive for the virus, but had no signs of the disease.

One of the project's leaders is Brian Subirana, a research scientist in MIT's Auto-ID Laboratory. Subirana and his team had already been developing AI models to examine forced-cough recordings to search for signs of Alzheimer's disease. Such signs can include changes in personality and memory loss, but Alzheimer's can also cause nerve and muscle problems, including weakened speech.

The MIT team says its latest model trained to identify Alzheimer's disease from cough sounds had also shown good progress as a possible way to help detect the condition.

So when the coronavirus pandemic developed, Subirana told MIT News, he thought the same model structure might work for COVID-19. This is because there was evidence that COVID-19 infected individuals may also experience voice muscle weakness.

Subirana said the researchers discovered "a striking² similarity" in the ability of the model to detect Alzheimer's and COVID-19. The experiment showed that the way a person produces sound changes if they are infected with COVID-19 even if no physical signs are present, he added.

The team says it is working to develop "a user-friendly app" that could be used on a wide basis to detect COVID-19 cases. This would make it possible for users to cough into their phone and receive immediate³ information on whether they might be infected and should seek an official test.

The effective use of such a tool could also "diminish⁴ the spread of the pandemic if everyone uses it before going to a classroom, a factory, or a restaurant," Subirana explained.

U.S. researchers at Pennsylvania's Carnegie Mellon University are also using machine learning methods to develop a "voice-based testing system for COVID-19." That system also uses recordings of coughs – as well as some vowel⁵ sounds and the alphabet – to identify "signatures" of the virus, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.

And in Britain, a similar project is being carried out by engineers at the University of Cambridge. Researchers working on that system reported in July they had created a machine learning tool that could correctly identify COVID-19 cases based on cough and breath sounds. Those models performed with a success rate of about 80 percent in laboratory tests, the team reported.

Words in This Story

cough – n. to force air through your throat with a short, loud noise often because you are sick

detect – v. to discover or notice something

artificial intelligence – n. the power of a machine to copy intelligent human behavior

symptom – n. a sign or marker of something, such as disease

positive – adj. in a medical test, positive means the person being tested has a disease or condition

striking – adj. easily noticed

app – n. a mobile phone program that performs a special function

diminish – v. to become less

signature – n. a sign that confirms something's identity

1 recordings   

n.记录( recording的名词复数 )；录音；录像；唱片

参考例句：

• a boxed set of original recordings 一套盒装原声录音带
• old jazz recordings reissued on CD 以激光唱片重新发行的老爵士乐

2 striking   

adj.显著的，惹人注目的，容貌出众的

参考例句：

• There is a striking difference between Jane and Mary.简和玛丽之间有显著的差异。
• What is immediately striking is how resourceful the children are.最令人注目的是孩子们的机智聪明。

3 immediate   

adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的

参考例句：

• His immediate neighbours felt it their duty to call.他的近邻认为他们有责任去拜访。
• We declared ourselves for the immediate convocation of the meeting.我们主张立即召开这个会议。

4 diminish   

vi.变少，变小，降低；vt.减少，减小，降低

参考例句：

• We should try to diminish the cost of production.我们应尽力减少生产成本。
• He likes to diminish the skill of others.他喜欢贬低别人的技术。

5 vowel   

n.元音；元音字母

参考例句：

• A long vowel is a long sound as in the word"shoe ".长元音即如“shoe” 一词中的长音。
• The vowel in words like 'my' and 'thigh' is not very difficult.单词my和thigh中的元音并不难发。